Erin The Great

A few days ago, I went to the Hindu temple in Spanish Fork, Ut for the ‘Festival of Colors’. My religion isn’t Hindu but I thought it would be fun to experience another religious custom (hence the reason I observed Lent this year).

The festival of colors or Holi, is a Hindu tradition celebrating the burning of the demoness ‘Holika’. Holi started with some entertainment and food and then worked into the reason everyone was there; the Bon-fire and the throwing of colors. To my understanding the significance of throwing the colors is medicinal. Because it’s a spring festival, it’s believed that the changing of the seasons brings on illness and viral flu’s. The colors are to help you to NOT to get sick.

This is funny because research has found that the colors contain components like asbestos and heavy metals that can cause asthma and skin disease…. Now they tell me! I’m sure glad someone slapped a whole handful of it in my eye, and like everyone else who was there, breathing in copious amounts of it!

Aside from the colors of death I must say that I had a lot of fun. I arrived with some old friends from back home and was amazed at how many people were all ready there. After about an hour of looking around, quite a crowd had formed and my group was right in the middle of it.

With very little warning I found my self gasping for air as hundreds of people started splashing each other with powdered colors. The smell was wonderful but my lungs weren’t happy with the amount of powder they were collecting. You couldn’t see even a foot in front of you because there was an eruption of brilliant colors everywhere.

After the dust started to sort of settle, you could see everyone just covered in different hues. Head to toe coverage on everybody in the massive crowd. After the eruption, the music, chanting and moshing started. After the moshing started, and just like clock work, the crowd surfing started. I was really excited because I wanted to crowd surf but everyone in the mosh pit started dropping the crowed surfers right and left… That put an end to that idea.

Even though it was a Hindu holiday, the place was over run by LDS people aka ‘Mormons’ everywhere. It was Like Mormon Woodstock ’08. I happen to LDS but looking around at all my crazy counter parts, it was like ‘Mormons gone wild’. I know I was there to learn and experience another culture, and I was a little taken back at the lack of respect and the need to just ‘cut loose’. I think there is a difference between experiencing something new, and just going to go crazy and have people wonder how many different drugs you’re on.

I guess all it takes in the ‘Mormon Bubble’ is a crazy Hindu festival and a bunch of dust color… I’d hate to see some of these self-oppressed souls hit Vegas…. Oh dear!

As I look out at the window at work, all I can see is the dismal, grey, and generally crappy weather we’ve been having… That and the back of Red Lobster, isn’t my view envious.

I’m from Oregon so you’d think I’d be used to never seeing the sun. Well thanks to the wonderful invention of the anti-depressant, I can mildly endure the wrath of our crappy weather. The only bad part about this is when my medication stops working and my SAD takes over, and the weather is still less than desirable… This is usually not good but at least I have Dr. Pepper calming my nerves.

Since it looks like the Willamette Valley of Oregon outside I thought I‘d put in some North West Humor in for all to enjoy. It’s ok if you don’t get the jokes, just leave a comment and I’d love to explain… being a native and all.

You might be from the North West if…

1. You know the state flower is mildew.
2. You have a T-shirt that says, “200 Billion Slugs Can’t Be Wrong!”
3. You use the term “sun break” and know what it means.
4. You feel guilty throwing out paper or aluminum cans.
5. You know more people who own a boat than own an air conditioner.
6. You will stand on a deserted corner in the rain and wait for the “Walk” signal.
7. You feel overdressed if you wear a suit to a fancy restaurant.
8. You can order coffee 10 different ways.
9. You can taste the difference between Seattle’s Best, Tully’s and Starbucks.
10. To you, swimming is an indoor sport.
11. You never go camping without a poncho and waterproof matches.
12. You know the difference between Coho, Chinook, and Sockeye salmon.
13. You know how to pronounce Puyallup, Sequim, Issaquah, Mukilteo, Yakima, Oregon, and Willamette.
14. You know that Boring is not a state of mind, but a town in Oregon.
15. You have no concept of humidity without precipitation.
16. You know the difference between mist, drizzle, rain, and showers.
17. You are not fazed by the weather forecast, “Today: Showers followed by rain. Tomorrow: Rain followed by showers.”
18. You rejoice at a forecast of “rain with sun breaks.”
19. You know what “The Mountain is out” means.
20. You can point out at least two volcanoes, even if you can’t see through the cloud cover.
21. You think people who use umbrellas are either tourists or wimps (or both).
22. You have actually used your mountain bike on a mountain.
23. You knew immediately that the view out of Frazier’s window was fake.
24. You use a down comforter and wear flannel pajamas in the summer.
25. Your kid’s Halloween costumes fit under a raincoat.
26. You know all the seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Raining (Spring), Road Construction (Summer), Deer and Elk season (Fall).
27. Every year you have to buy new sunglasses because you can’t find the old ones after such a long time.
28. You’re only about 10 minute from any given river or lake.

29. You can drive through several inches of standing water on the road, surrounded by fog, going anywhere from 45-65 miles an hour without flinching!

Enjoy! I know I just did! I miss Oregon’s beauty, but I don’t miss not seeing the sun for 9 months out of the year.

I’m going to start a ‘Stupid News’ feed on Fridays. I know its Thursday but we’re going to pretend that today is really Friday.

The top headlines for today are as follows;

Rancher arrested for selling ‘Snake Vodka’ – Apparently you can’t get arrested for selling vodka with a snake in it but you can get arrested for selling vodka without a liquor license.

A Pregnant Man? – I watched this on yahoo.news so it at least has some credibility right?

Man charges ‘Big Foot’ with molestation – It wasn’t big foot you moron! It was the aliens who probed big foot and turned him into their own personal lackey!

I know it was two weeks ago but I must make an honorable mention to the Woman who sat on the toilet seat for 2 years….

On pregger man and big foot, you have to scroll down to the video because i haven’t figured out how to upload yahoo’s player… Thanks for bearing with me! Until next Friday with more stupid news…

I think I speak for everyone when I say ‘Where are the new episodes’? Since the Writers strike ended a while ago the only thing I’ve been able to do, is keep hitting spoilerfix.com in hopes that I get my daily dose of spoilers and plot points, since the ‘creative teams’ are taking their sweet time giving us what we want.

Ordinarily I’m a patient person but for the love of everything holy! I just want to know if Nurse Rose gets the boot and if Meredith Gray finally pulls her head out of her butt long enough to say ‘oh Derek, I will marry you because my issues are ridiculous and they’ve been recurring since day 1’. I love Grey’s Anatomy but this season has been a little too much ‘Days of Our Lives’ for my taste.

As for ‘The Office’, well…Luckily the drama isn’t enough to keep me reeling into oblivion until it comes back on the air… it’s just extremely entertaining.

Finally we get to ‘Scrubs’! Are JD and Elliott ever getting together? My pool hall oracle has told me this is so. It’s a magic 8 ball… It knows all!

As the weeks drag on and my patience wears thinner and thinner but our redemption is near!

Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my ‘Scrubs’, ‘The Office’ & ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ to me…. To me!!!

I am in absolute awe at the wonderful job done by my friend John. He’s the one that gave my blog the amazing facelift! If you like his work, you can find him at areallygoodname.com. Thanks again man, you did good!

Every Tuesday after work I go to our ‘Service Night’. Usually we help tutor, read to, or just generally hang out and play with the kids. This is really fun especially when you find yourself playing with Barbie dolls and tripping heavily down memory lane. I wasn’t really into ‘Girl toys’ when I was little, but I did love playing with Barbies. Neither my friend Ashton nor I had played with Barbie dolls since the age of 10 maybe? But it was fun to jump right back in and dress them up and do their hair. After the ‘Barbie Fashion Show’ of 2008 had come to a close a couple of us thought it would be a good idea to play dress up and go for ice cream.

After going to the local grocery store in one of my old prom dresses for ice cream and receiving looks like ‘who the heck was that?’ and ‘why is she in a gold prom dress’? I just had to chuckle heartily because honestly, I think it’s completely healthy to indulge the inner-kid inside you every now and then. It’s how I keep my sanity sometimes. Whether people think I’m insane for doing so or not. I highly recommend doing things like that… always mess with their minds. It’s fun!

It just goes to show that you’re only young once, but you have the rest of your life to be immature.

I was sitting at my teller station when a customer came up to me. I hadn’t really been paying attention until I noticed something. You’d think that the presence of another human being would have been the cue that clued me in to their existence, but it wasn’t. Unfortunately I had smelled something rather odiferous and looked up to realize that it was another human being standing right in front of me.

OY! It was all I could do to keep a straight face, and not wretch in front of the customer. I got to thinking about this. Why do some people take personal hygiene more seriously than others and why do people who have relatively good personal hygiene smell like weird things like bacon or beef soup?

Are people really aware of how they smell? The people who smell like bacon, beef soup, fish, and garlic, do they know that they are secreting the odor? Drink water like a fiend and it’ll flush the smell right out of your system. You’re urine will smell, but better your urine than you right?

This brings me to my other smell genre…people who smell like urine, BO, oily head and dirty clothes. I have one word for you… SOAP! Soap in all its glory! Wash your clothes, and wash your body. Take a vacuum to your carpet and stop letting food ferment under various pieces of furniture.

Please note that many smells together don’t necessarily match and smell good. It’s like being over whelmed my female smell in an elevator. You smell the soap, hairspray, lotion, perfume, as well as other products. Too many smells are just as bad as not doing anything about a bad smell.

Back to my point, normally you know when you need to brace yourself for an oncoming smell but sometimes it surprises you. Since I work at a bank, there are a lot of workers that are of the ranks of the great un-washed i.e. construction, masonry, electricians and plumbers etc.

Usually you can expect the smell of stale cigarettes and body odor. Sometimes I’m surprised when I have a mason or a construction worker that is in front of me that smells like tide and fabric softener. They’ve been working a hard day and yet they don’t turn the air green with their existence.

Appearance is another thing. I think it’s funny when people will take jabs at your appearance but leave your particular brand of ‘human stank’ alone. I have a friend I work with that wears his hair in a must up way. It doesn’t look bad or unprofessional but for some reason a customer left him a comb and told him to comb his hair. Sometimes I really don’t feel like getting ready for work. I don’t look bad but my hair is in a ponytail, I’ll have my glasses on and maybe some mascara. My clothes weren’t wrinkled but for some reason people looked at me and will sometimes ask me why I didn’t bother to get ready this morning. Who are you people? Just because I didn’t feel like putting on a dress, heels and gobs of makeup apparently I’m slumming?

I guess its ok to make fun of someone who didn’t have time to shave or who probably needs a hair cut but forget them going after the smelly people…. That’s just rude! (Note sarcasm) I think if you’re going to criticize one, you might as well criticize the other. Be brave and hand over a bar of soap to a smelly soul or just keep your comments to yourself!

I have now been back on my ‘life source’ (Dr. Pepper) for 3 wonderful days now. I think if I had to go even a week longer without it, it might have been necessary for those who know me to get a court order, forcing me to go back on it.

I know you would like to think I’m kidding, but I’m really not. I think the last straw was last Friday when I was driving to work and I happened upon 3 construction workers walking in the middle of the road. Ordinarily I would just slow down and make a moving gesture with my arms while they sauntered out of the way. Well being at the end of my ‘Lent rope’ I not only sped up to about 45 mph but also started yelling and screaming at them to get out of my *&%*$#^ way! Not my finest 10 minutes, but luckily they got the hint that the crazy lady wasn’t about to slow down and promptly moved out of the way.

Since 12:01 Saturday morning I’ve been relaxed, chill, and ridiculously unfazed by my crazy life. To me Lent couldn’t have ended fast enough. To celebrate my enthusiasm I’ve decided to write a really bad poem:

Disclaimer: I’m a writer, not a poet.

“Dr. Pepper how I love thee, I hope beyond hope that you
never leave me.
In Plano Texas I do trust, if the bottling factory closes, it’ll
be a bust.
And in a padded room I’d remain, for the rest of my natural
born life.

The comfort and relaxation you bring to my soul, the
glistening liquid as a whole.
Flows through my veins, bringing them life, when I’m without
you, it cuts like a knife. A pain I hope others never know.

So to Dr. Pepper I’ll pledge my allegiance, no other nectar will have such
brilliance! Forever yours I’ll stay.”

Sorry to put you folks through that. I will never claim to be good at poetry. But it felt nice to get my feelings out there. Thank you for support and not judging me too badly for that awful display.

I was on my friend Ian’s podcast yesterday. I’ve never been interviewed before, so it was a new experience for me. I hope I don’t sound like an un-educated moron. If you want to check it out you can find it on iTunes by looking up ‘The Ian McConnaughey Show’. I’m episode 38. Luckily I was heavily caffeinated so my nerves won’t completely show through.

In less then nine hours from now, I’ll be enjoying the amazing taste of Texas comfort or as it is more formally known as… Dr. Pepper.

As most of you know, I gave up Dr. Pepper for Lent. Thank goodness lent ends as of 12:01am Saturday because I was pretty close to going on a shooting rampage. That may be overstating it a bit but you get my drift.

I’m very excited about this, especially since I will finally be able to relax a little bit instead of trying to find alternate methods of doing so. I’m not the only one excited to enjoy the crisp taste of an ice cold Dr. Pepper. My friends, family and co-workers are just as, if not more excited for me to finally end this crazy crusade. Apparently I’m a lot easier to handle when I have my life source running through my blood stream and soothing my nerves.

All I have to say is that in theory, lent is a good idea but when you only have one vice, it’s not a good idea to give that one vice up. No sir. I’ll be back in action tomorrow and fully caffeinated! I must also thank someone who was the only person who stayed strong with me in my Lent observing endeavor.

Todd! Thank you for being just as addicted to Dr. Pepper as I am and staying strong with me through Lent. I may have shanghaied you into this but thank you for being such a good sport about it.

It’s that time of year again where you bust out your news papers, do the Yahoo pick ‘em, and for facebook lovers, there is now an application where you can pick your bracket groups and fill out your brackets. That’s right folks; the NCAA Championship is now under full swing!

I received all my invites for March Madness around 11:30 pm last night… This didn’t exactly give me a whole lot of time to ponder who would kick whose trash in the bracket wars. I was filling out my yahoo picks as fast and carefully as I could given the time restraint, and all I could think back to was how well the teams did last year. Being a girl and especially being a girl in Provo Ut, it’s hard to convince others (roommates) the necessity of having ESPN or even Sports Center, I find it hard to keep up with latest rankings and how everyone is doing.

So far, I’m faring ok in the group that I’m in, but something tells me that won’t last long unless N. Carolina wins… Good golly I hope N. Carolina wins, then I might have a chance. There is nothing worse then the guys looking at you with the ‘she’s just a girl, she doesn’t know’ look. Especially since most of March Madness is usually luck any way. If anything pisses me off more, it’s gender pity.